Competing for Adult Students

In November 2012, The EvoLLLution dedicated a Special Feature to Competing for Adult Students in Higher Education.

The modern higher education landscape is vastly different than it was even ten years ago. Increasing numbers of adult students are returning to the academy and state funding for higher education has been steadily declining. Of course, as the landscape of the industry changes, strategies for success must change along with it.

Day1

Competing for Adult Students

Given the growth of the adult student population base, the reduction in state funding for higher education and the national emphasis on increasing the number of credential-holders, it is imperative that higher education institution begin making greater efforts to enroll and serve adult learners.

How Can States Support Adult Higher Education?

Higher education institutions and governments have a shared responsibility to ensure that adult learners have access to the educational opportunities necessary for them to achieve the career and life they want to reach.

States have historically set their focus on supporting traditional-age students, but as demographics evolve the time has come for them to put more investment and energy into improving higher education for adults.

DEBATE | What Type of Institution Is Best-Suited for Adults?

Since most for-profit institutions were built from the ground-up, they did not have to overcome cultural and policy barriers than create challenges for adult students in many other long-established higher education institutions.

Private, not-for-profit institutions provide students the personalized guidance they need to ensure that they have a positive, successful and rigorous educational experience that makes them want to come back for more.

Since for-profit institutions have done most of the leg-work in developing high-quality online education models, it is up to public institutions to widen access to low-cost, highly-flexible higher education.

Day4

What Do Adult Students Want?

By understanding the needs of adult students, colleges and universities can tailor their programming to meet those needs and, in turn, find that happy and satisfied students and graduates will share their experiences with their friends and colleagues.

To choose an institution, a student must know that the programming on offer is relevant to their career aspirations and that they can receive top-quality education at the time and place that is most convenient to them.

Ensuring your institution has an established and recognized brand is only half the battle. Once that brand is established, colleges and universities must go above and beyond to ensure their marketing plan is being carried out and received successfully.

Creating specialized and innovative programs for adult learners is a way to grow enrollments, if it is done correctly. However, to be successful in this endeavor, institutions must invest the necessary time and resources to maintain and scale these programs.

Day10

Attracting Higher Education’s ‘New-Traditional’ Students

Wanting flexibility in programming is not the same as wanting an easy program. Adult learners require their higher education institutions to deliver learning at times and in ways that are convenient for them, so they can live their lives while continuing their higher education.

Continuing education units at big, name-brand universities may have less difficulty in attracting people through name recognition, but they must work very hard to distinguish their product for their prospective students.

Whether you’re appealing to adult students or traditional-age high school graduates, quality education is going to be a major factor in their decision to enroll. However, adult students are far more focused on the career implications of their education than 18-22 year old learners.

Day11

Defining Success in Adult Higher Education Marketing

Taking a metric-backed approach has helped the Stanford Center for Professional Development understand the outcomes of their marketing initiatives and their work helps define the goals and viability of future marketing activities.

Through the natural capacity to share digital badges through social media and other online tools, higher education institutions will have the opportunity to reach a wider range of students than they otherwise would and show prospective students real-world learning outcomes simultaneously.

ePortfolios provide learners with the opportunity to blend their in-class learning with the experiential, on-the-job learning to give employers, institutions and themselves a much clearer picture of what they are capable of.

Day13

Making Higher Education Work For Adults

By accepting credit and work done at prior institutions and through other learning providers, higher education institutions can take a big step toward making colleges and universities work for today’s adult student.

The Bologna Accord provisions make it easier for students to have their qualifications and competencies recognized across Europe, making it easier for individuals to work and study in different places.

Higher education can be a confusing challenge for many adults, especially given the traditional focus on class time for completion. The competency-based model, however, allows a simpler path to a degree by focusing more on what the student knows than how long they have been enrolled.

As the workforce moves in the direction of learning validation over prior credentials—which is the say the focus is more on how you can apply your learning than where and how you learned—competency-based models of higher education are becoming vital for adults who want to progress into, or to the next step of, a career.

Given the critical importance of employee competence in today’s workforce, competency-based models are becoming increasing important for employers, as this approach to higher education ensures that employees both understand the concepts being taught and can apply them in the work world.

Day14

Marketing Higher Education to Adults

Successfully marketing to adult students requires a college or university to go beyond simply having resources available. Those resources must be optimized to enhance the student’s experience, and designed in such a way that they felt understood.

Higher education institutions have a great opportunity to engage prospective, current and past students through various social media channels, but it is important to understand and correctly use those channels in order to be successful.

Day15

DEBATE | Do MOOCs Benefit the Higher Education Industry?

While MOOCs do not aim to replace the in-person interactions offered by higher education institutions, they provide students the opportunity to expand their knowledge and pursue their interests without dedicating fixed periods of time to fit a college or university schedule.

While Massive Open Online Courses gain increasing attention and popularity in the higher education world, has anyone stopped to ask what exactly makes this courses more “massive”, “open” or “online” than other online programming geared toward adult learners?

MOOCs have created massive change in the higher education space, but there are a number of hurdles left for them to jump before they can be reasonably accepted as mainstream practice for colleges and universities.

Given the number of options that adult students have when selecting a college or university to enroll at for their higher education, public institutions must go above and beyond to ensure adult students understand exactly how enrolling with them is advantageous.

Colleges and universities must understand their students’ diverse needs and expectations in order to properly serve them, and it is evident that adult learners require robust online and distance components to be available in order for their education to work for them.

Day17

Focusing on Strengths to Meet Adult Students’ Needs

Instructional designers and programmers face the challenging task of trying to develop academic programming that is both academically rigorous and aligned with current workforce needs. An institution’s flexibility, specifically from non-credit units, is essential to ensuring that colleges and universities can remain flexible in this regard.

In order to successfully compete in the adult higher education market, institutions must focus on their own strengths and ensure they perform well, rather than trying to imitate the strategies of competitors.

Day18

Attracting Specific Segments of Adult Students

Labeling a college or university as “Military Friendly” is more than just a marketing plot. It should be a marker that signifies an institution as being culturally in-tune with the distinct lifestyle and needs of active and veteran military students.

Numerous industries are in periods of great flux and change, causing a large number of people to be out of work and even more who are searching for new careers. This new reality in the labor market requires higher education institutions to shape their programming to meet the specific needs of students who are out of work or who are enrolled to find a new job.

Despite the emergence of poorer-quality institutions with the growth of the higher education industry, the competition means that most institutions are improving their quality and efficiency while the market will correct and “shake out” the lesser institutions.

In the pursuit of more students in this hypercompetitive marketplace, higher education institutions are committing their resources toward the most popular programs they offer, meaning they are cutting loose programs that may not be financially sustainable but serve an important social good mission.

It's becoming increasingly important for higher education institutions to serve adult learners and, over the course of this Special Feature, we will be publishing article and interviews from contributors across the higher education world discussing their opinions on issues including:

What type of institution is best-suited to serve adult learners?

How can institutions develop specialized programs to serve adult students?

What factors determine whether a marketing strategy geared toward adults has been successful?

How can higher education institutions compete with edu-preneurs for adult student enrollments?

During this month's Special Feature, learn everything you wanted to know about competing for adult students. Read, comment and learn about this exciting new wave for higher education!